Well, the author using 'straw person', as can be seen from the quotation in the first paragraph (from p92 of the book). Perhaps they're poking a little fun at the way the author uses it. Or perhaps they agree with the author that we should stop using 'straw man', and they're trying to help propagate the term. My bet is on the former.

Is it that ridiculous to think that someone might want to avoid terms that imply maleness as the norm?? I don't see what the problem here is (unless, as 10:30 said, the problem is treating it like a noun - which is pretty weird).

I am loving this post. I am waiting for one of you jerks to come up with the origin of the word 'strawman'. I'm too lazy.I personally think it is good to use gender-neutral terms whenever possible, but chrono has a point --the reviewer might be poking a bit of fun. Any why not? Most fuckers in this discipline take themselves way too seriously.So, is the "blind-review" officially out?

You're probably right. In unrelated news, I chair a college committee; yesterday a member contacted me about the meeting minutes (I'm tasked with forwarding them), since they did not mention her requesting that I loan her my Dixon Ticonderoga so should could pencil in her thoughts (writing helped structure her thinking, she told me) on a motion which was tabled after we cycled through several objections.

I think a straw man is just a scarecrow. I had a professor (now emeritus - age is no excuse for avoiding language that makes being male the norm) who referred to the scarecrow fallacy rather than the straw man fallacy. It's not gender specific but avoids the ackwardness of 'straw person'.

If using the male pronoun and its satellites (as with 'he' and 'straw man') excludes women, and using their female counterparts (as with ships, nations, and the planet itself) objectifies and thus dehumanizes women, I can only conclude that using gender neutral terms -- being a balance between the two -- constitutes a hybrid exclusion and dehumanization.

A former colleague of mine -- who, incidentally, was a terrible philosophy instructor, a terrible thinker and a terrible human being -- used the term 'straw figure'. She even stressed the 'figure' when she used it in conversation with anyone who committed the error(?) of saying 'straw man'.

Azur, you seem to be arguing that since an argument for gender superiority based on in-print pronoun frequency would be fallacious (I'd agree), we can conclude that in-print pronoun frequency has no consequences of any kind.

But that's fallacious. Pscyhological effects are not caused exclusively by sound reasoning.

Also, if issues of "staw man" vs "straw person" seem to you to be of such little consequence, why the resistance on your part to a change?

My take is that matters of emotion -- such as how we psychologically feel about something -- are essentially outside of our control, and as such, are essentially random factors.

Since I don't think a random factor can bear any weight as a premise (it makes no sense to say "Given X or ~X, therefore Y"), I don't think they're any use in forming a conclusion -- such as whether or not gendered pronouns should be used in general contexts.

This means that the only consideration here is, in fact, whether something is rationally persuasive.

As to your last, I'm not resistant to people choosing to use "straw person" if that's what tickles them, I'm resistant to being taken as insensitive or worse if I choose the traditional term.

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